Below:

Next story in Tech and gadgets

Anyone who’s ever forgotten to pay a bill will empathize with the
recent victims of an Internet-based bank-robbing scheme operating
out of Slovenia.

The Slovenian national Computer Emergency Response
Team, SI-CERT, reported Saturday (March 23) that five
Slovenian citizens had been arrested in connection with a
series of malware attacks that led to 2 million euros ($2.6
million) being stolen from the accounts of several small and
medium-size businesses.

The cyber-criminals allegedly sent spoof emails made to look like
late-payment warnings from local banks and, in one case, a state
tax authority.

Attached to the fear-inducing emails were
Trojans that, once downloaded, installed a remote
administration toolkit (RAT) on the victims' PCs.

The RAT enabled the alleged criminals to monitor the activities
of the businesses' accounting departments, eventually gleaning
the necessary credentials to break into a company’s bank account.

So whenever a business employee targeted by the gang forgot to
remove the smartcard from its reader after use, the company bank
accounts were simply sitting ducks for the cybercriminals.

The thieves typically waited until a Friday or the day before a
national holiday to move money out of the rightful owners'
accounts into dummy accounts set up to receive the stolen money,
according to SI-CERT.

This allowed the criminal activity to go unnoticed for several
days before being brought to the attention of business and bank
personnel.

The malware doesn't sound like a typical
banking Trojan, which is a more sophisticated piece of
malware that automates much of what these alleged criminals did
manually, such as grabbing login credentials and emptying
accounts. But the end result was the same.

In an attempt to turn the stolen money in the dummy accounts into
cash, the criminals also concocted a fraudulent British insurance
company as part of a work-at-home scam employing 25 unsuspecting
money mules.

The mules successfully transferred approximately 2 million euros
before police apprehended those thought to be responsible for the
scheme.

The recent arrests are the result of an investigation that began
in mid-2012, when SI-CERT started to receive reports from
businesses about the malware-packed email scheme.